


And still the sea is salt

by lakeboys



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 17:45:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19045315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lakeboys/pseuds/lakeboys
Summary: “Are you into astronomy?”Victoria and Taylor look at some stars.





	And still the sea is salt

**Author's Note:**

> felt nostalgic for the true LiS rarepair so here's a (very) old draft I had kicking around.

She can’t help herself, the excitement is clear in her voice as she catches Victoria hanging a new poster in her dorm room. Some kind of screen print of the lunar cycle, or least or part it, the lunar cycle has way more phases than the three shown on the poster but Taylor’s already getting ahead of herself.

“Are you into astronomy?”

Victoria seemed momentarily confused until she glanced back at the newly hung poster. “It’s art, Taylor. I’m not some science freak.”

Right. Should have known better than to come straight out with it. “Ugh, you don’t have to be a science freak to like the stars, Victoria. That’s a nice poster anyway.”

Victoria gives a noncommittal hum, still looking back at her poster before askings “And you? Are you into astronomy?”

The cat's already out the bag at this point so Taylor feels like she might as well commit to it “Yeah. I mean, I’m not counting down to the next Leonids meteor shower or anything.” 

Taylor realises a moment too late that using proper meteor shower titles is giving away the true extent of her interest so she quickly pushes on. “My parents used to take me stargazing when I was a kid. We had this really nice telescope for it.”

“That sounds,” there’s a slight pause from Victoria, “nice. My family isn’t really the outdoorsy type.”

“Maybe you were lucky then. My dad loves all that typical dad crap. Camping, fishing, the whole hog, so I got brought camping nearly every summer till I was like, thirteen on something. And that’s not even including going to actual summer camp.” Taylor puts on a voice of mild annoyance but honestly, some of her best memories of summer were spent at camp or down by the creek with her dad. She still remembers the excitement of checking on her DIY fish trap, made from a soda bottle cut in half and placed between some rocks on the river bed. Her dad had always said the small fish she caught would make great bait but he always let her release them at the end of the day.

But that doesn’t feel like something worth sharing with Victoria, not right now at least, so she sticks with her presentation of teenage apathy.

“Anyway. My dad, he taught me a bunch of the constellations and stuff.”

Victoria goes about straightening some loss items around her desk before sitting in office chair and swizzling round to face her. “I guess it’d be nice to know a little more about them. More than just horoscope dribble at least.”

“I could show you, if you want.” 

Victoria raised an eyebrow but lets Taylor continue.

“We could go out, like, stargazing. Do it properly. Blackwell’s already at the top of Arcadia so it’s not that far a drive up to the peak, you’d get a really good view from there. Less light pollutions and all that shit.” Taylor can tell that she’s tipping her hand and showing her eagerness but she doesn’t want to let the change pass her by.

“Hm. I guess there’s nothing else going on right now.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun. Look, we can take a bottle of wine and bitch about the upcoming semester.” Cards firmly on the table now, Taylor watches Victoria mull over decision.

“Alright, sure. Let's do it next weekend.”

Jackpot. The weekend plan is in motion. 

-

A few short texts and one phone call later, Taylor’s dad has packed up her older portable telescope and shipped it over to Blackwell. It arrives on Friday, just in time for the weekend. 

They’re into their last weekend of August which means the summer is almost over and school will be starting up sooner than she wants to think about. Vortex meetings and party planning events are going to be in full swing again soon enough, on top of their crushing Blackwell workload. 

They’d both come back to the dorms early this year. There are a few others, some there for summer school and other involved in extracurricular activities meant to boost their college applications. That’s why Victoria’s here, though Taylor suspects it wouldn’t take much to drag her away from her family. Victoria’s not as cold as her reputations leads the rest of her peeps to believe, but there’s a certain distance she uses when speaking about home. 

It’s not something Taylor is practically good at relating to, she’s always been close with her mom and dad. They were the typical supportive parents who saved to send their kid to a nice private school the town over. She actually ended up terribly homesick when she first came to Blackwell, despite not living too far out. She went home on the weekend fairly regularly to begin with, her parents never batting an eye, always ready with a hug and a big family dinner.

It’s what’s made her mom being hospitalised this year partially grueling. Suddenly the perfect picture of her parents, always standing by to support her, has been altered, distorted. Taylor has had to readjust how she sees them, focus on what they truly are: just normal people capable of getting into a shitty situations like everyone else. 

So she and Victoria both understand their circumstances are different but they still try. Victoria catches her arm in the hallways, pulls her hand away from biting her nails down any further and asks how her mom’s treatment is going, if she needs a ride to visit her soon. Taylor, in kind, does not ask if Victoria parents are coming to the student exhibitions at the end of the year, or if they have made any comments on Victoria’s near, but not quite, perfect 3.9 GPA. They work with this understanding and Taylor’s grateful for it

Taylor’s glad Victoria agreed to their little night excursion. Besides the obvious treat of getting to share one of her lesser known hobbies with Victoria, the time away from the dorms and their family situations will be a nice reprieve. They’re only going to have a few of these distinctly private moments before everyone’s returns at Blackwell and pressure to perform is back, be it academically or socially. Taylor wants to savour these moments while she can. 

She’s probably worrying for nothing though. Soon they’ll be college and everything about Arcadia Bay will seem laughable twee. The year will come and go like any other, filled with parties, hookups, late night revision, exams and an abundance of photos taken to document it all. They’ll look back and laugh. 

-

They don’t actually end up taking any wine because Victoria is driving and while she’s no stranger to a few outdoor parties she’s not stupid, especially when it comes to her own car. It’s a short drive up but it calms some of Taylor’s initial nervousness. She’s used to being in Victoria’s car, they’ve been been using it all summer to drive around Arcadia, as well as few day trips over the weekends when Victoria needed out of small-town-nowhere and back into a city.

They park and walk the rest of the short trail to clearing near the top of the forest. 

“God, I can’t believe you talked me into looking at the sky in the freezing cold.” Victoria voice cut sharper than the crisp night chill. 

“You’re such a baby! It’s not even that cold.” Taylor shoots her an incredulous look, “Aren’t you from Seattle? You guys get like, no sun over there. How is this even that cold to you?”

“Oh shut up. The windchill is fucking terrible up here! I swear it’s like the wind never lets up, there hasn’t been a still day all summer.”

Taylor shrugs, “Guess it’s just fall settling in.”

Taylor casually links their arms together as they keep walking, which is a totally normal thing to do that she shouldn’t over think it at all, and after a few more catty exchanges they finally reach the peak. The whole of Arcadia Bay is laid out below them. A valley of street lamps and illuminated windows are spread across the town right up to the coastline where the sea rushes to meet the horizon in dark pools of star speckled skies. 

Taylor shrugs off the duffle bag she’s brought with their supplies and begins to pull out the telescope and star chart. Victoria goes to check her phone out of habit before frowning when seemingly remembering the lack of signal their current destination gives. From the corner of her eye, Taylor watches as Victoria instead uses her phone to line up a shot of the town below them. Ever the photographer.

“I brought some hot drinks as well. Coffee in the blue flask, hot chocolate in the red.” 

Victoria shuffles back to retrieve the drinks while Taylor sets up the portable telescope. Once she’s done Victoria hands her one of the plastic mugs that came with the thermos flask and slowly pour out their drinks from the red flask. Taylor’s not sure if Victoria’s even aware of how obvious her sweet tooth is but she’s not about to let slip one of the few shortcuts she has to a smile.

“Alright Taylor, make this worth my time.” The statement is far less threatening when it’s said over the rim of a mug of hot chocolate. 

“As if you’d come anywhere you didn’t actually want to be.” Taylor smiles back and then considers where to begin. Probably best to go with what got them here in the first place.

“Let's start easy. Come here,” Taylor gestures for Victoria to look through the telescope.

Despite her early remarks Victoria does seem interested in what she’s about to see. Placing her mug down she moves to peer through the telescope. After a few seconds she stands up straight and glares at Taylor.

“It’s the Moon.”

“Well yeah. It’s nice though, right? Not the same kind of nice as your poster but still.” 

Maybe Victoria thought Taylor was trying to make fun of her because she continues to stare her down for a few seconds longer until apparently judging her reaction as genuine. 

She gives Taylor a once-over before adding “I suppose it has a certain appeal up close.” 

Taylor flushes, spinning the wheel of the star chart back and both. She considers their next constellation “Alright, let's see if we can find your star sign. Your birthday was just a few weeks ago, right? So you’re a leo then.”

It plays out much the same for the rest of the evening, Taylor pointing out constellations, some already known to Victoria, some new. They do end up talking about the upcoming semester but there’s far less gossip than is typical when bringing up Blackwell. 

Taylor preppers a few stories of camping in with their stargazing, as well as a few tales her dad told her about the constellations themselves. Victoria sips her hot chocolate and stands close the whole time, never moving from her orbit. But no, if anyone’s in orbit here it’s clearly Taylor. She’s the one who’s always gazed up at stars so of course she’s drawn to Victoria, the most vibrant of stars she’s seen yet. 

Eventually they sat on an old blanket Taylor had packed, finishing the last of their hot drinks and continuing to look up at the stars. Taylor was quickly reminded however that sitting this close with nothing but her own thoughts, thoughts that were on what perfume Victoria was wearing, definitely Eau de Soir, was only going to lead her into trouble. Best to fill the silence now before she ended up doing any self reflection on why spending so much time together, just the two to them, for most of the summer felt so- yeah that was already sounding like self reflection bullshit. No need to overthink it and spoil what this was they had going. This would be enough. Probably.

Trying to shake free from her restless thoughts Taylor sketched her arm out and started pointing out the stars that were still visible to them without the aid of a telescope. Which turned out to be much harder for Victoria to follow along with.

“Okay, look.” Taylor shifts closer, picking up Victoria’s hand and guiding it up so that she was using it as a pointer. Slowly she used their intertwined hands to begin tracing the outline of Cassiopeia against the night sky. “Do you see it now?”

“Yeah,” Victoria’s voice sounded further away, like it was drifting up to meet the stars “I see it.”

Victoria turns slightly, eyes meeting Taylors, and gives her one of those rare unguarded smiles that she so covets. Taylor’s pretty sure that Victoria could ask her to bring her a piece of the Moon right now and Taylor would start the “Sent Taylor Christensen to Space” Kickstarter by first light. 

Thankfully Victoria only her asks to continue mapping out stars.

“Show me another, Mon chéri.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't actually know anything about astronomy but I did make those fish trap things from pop bottles and I always let the fish go afterwards.


End file.
